The Thief
by Number1PixarFan
Summary: In 1950's LA, a young nightclub waiter and aspiring jewel thief courts and conspires with a married socialite. Pelant/Ghost Killer. Takes place in the 200th episode's 50s AU. Crossposted to AO3


**A/N: Aha, yes, I'm back. I may have moved my other Pelant/Ghost Killer fic to AO3 for being too smutty, but you didn't really think you were free from this ship, did you, FF?**

 **So this is about the 200** **th** **episode where they did the 50's/Alfred Hitchcock AU. I rewatched it recently and Pelant was in it for all of fifteen seconds, but I thought "Hey, I have a ship with this guy in it, why not take that ship to the 1950s?"**

 **The only reason Oliver is the husband is because he was the only intern featured that season who was conspicuously absent from the episode.**

* * *

"Don't answer that, darling. I've got only so much time before Oliver starts to miss me." She held her lover's hand tenderly and dug her fingernails into his wrist. In the next room, a telephone was clattering off its mount.

With a snicker and a smile, he kissed her knuckles to release her grip. "I got a job to do," he whispered. "I know to you that's a foreign concept, but…"

"Oh, hush. Just be quick."

Christopher winked at her and disobeyed, exchanging tedious pleasantries with the frantic-sounding gentleman at the other end of the telephone line as he strolled with it across the dining room. Stephanie peered around the doorframe, holding a handkerchief to her face so he might not see how his defiance made her blush.

Her lover was a teasing ass, to be certain. Better that than an impotent ass like her husband. Ollie Wells was the sort of privileged young man who reveled in his own superiority while doing nothing to exercise it. He took her to the Velvet Fox five nights a week so he could get sloshed on bourbon, boast about his East Coast education and point out his wealthy bride like a trophy. On the slower days, she was another ear for him to blather into, but it was clear he neither had respect for Stephanie nor deserved any from her. It was under these weary circumstances that she had caught the eye of Christopher, a lowly waiter at the nightclub who didn't have to flaunt his brains and ambition for her to know they were there.

The woman sitting next to Miz Caroline was uncommonly beautiful, her features smooth, yet defined, like a character in a Norman Rockwell painting. Christopher was staring at her just a bit too closely. Stephanie felt a twinge of jealousy in her gut.

Perhaps that made her a hypocrite. She didn't care.

As the room's conversations reached a lull, he finally approached the beautiful woman. His words were courteous and professional –"Phone for you, Ms. Brennan," – but even with his back turned to her, Stephanie could hear the lingering smile he normally reserved for her in his voice: lips slightly parted, brows raised, eyes menacing and hyperfocused on absorbing this woman's every physical detail with some bits of her soul thrown in for good measure. The suspicious look on Miz Caroline's face only confirmed what Stephanie already knew, and when Christopher returned, she was prepared to tell him as much.

"I sincerely hope you weren't planning on anything with that trollop over –" A fat kiss on the lips interrupted her. A sigh escaped her as she swallowed down whatever it was she was angry about, and she came away with men's hair product coating her fingertips. "My, my…"

"I did a little eavesdropping and learned something very interesting," Christopher said, looping his arms around her waist. "Seems that the City of Angels' most notorious jewel thief is gonna be, by hook or by crook, out of the game for good."

"Not Seeley Booth?"

"He's the one."

"The man whose methods you've studied for years?"

"Whose methods I've _perfected,_ " he corrected, grinning. "In theory. Remind me, doll, what you told me about your husband. What it would take for you to leave him and run away with me."

"Only when he's dead," Stephanie replied, "or when you're solvent enough to buy me a bigger diamond than this." She extended her left hand, lifting Ollie's modest engagement ring to Christopher's eye level. He grabbed her hand so he could examine it more closely; the feeling of his fingers in between hers gave her shivers.

"Before you know it, I'll have stolen you a ring three times this size."

He was too humble. Stephanie knew he was capable of more; he was capable of _anything_. She pouted deliberately. "What if I told you I was gunning a little more for that first option?"

Their eyes met, and she could see the gears spinning in his head. "Booth _was_ just in the paper putting a knife in some big spender's back," he said. "Tell you what, Stephie, if I'm gonna replace him as public enemy number one, I might as well do it with a little more style."

"God, I love you." She threw her arms around his shoulders as she kissed him deeply. His hands went to her waist. There was a small commotion going on in the dining room, and though there was no music playing, the two lovers danced to the melody of other couples squabbling and revelations being made. Certainly that _whore_ Ms. Brennan was at the center of the conversation (wasn't she the center of _everything_ lately?). Stephanie steered Christopher so his back was to the door and squinted one eye open, keeping him busy with giggles and biting kisses until she saw that the goddess he'd been ogling had left.

Christopher was breathless and reluctant to let go as she finally pulled away. "Perhaps I should've turned to crime sooner," he murmured.

"I really do need to go now," she apologized. She didn't want to let him out of her arms, either, but as of now, she still had a husband. "Don't get into anything stupid tonight, you hear?"

"Have I ever?" he said, making Stephanie laugh. "Will I see you again tomorrow?"

"And every day after." She reached out to squeeze his hand goodbye, but he wouldn't let go. " _Christopher!_ " she scolded quietly as he pulled her back through the door.

"Wait a moment," he said, smirking. "You don't want Oliver to see you without your necklace, do you?"

Stephanie shook her head, but her free hand went to her collar anyway. She gasped when she realized that the pearl necklace Ollie had given her for her birthday was not, in fact, around her neck, but dangling from Christopher's fingers. "How…?" she murmured, an astonished smile spreading across her face. "I didn't even feel…"

"That's just how good I am, doll."

She looked up and there it was: that smile. That playful, devious, _dangerous_ smile, only now it was for her and her alone. That was what did it. She threw herself back into Christopher's arms, Oliver be damned. If he asked any questions, she could just tell him the truth: she'd been stolen.

* * *

 **A/N: I probably could have ended it after they conspired to murder Oliver, but it felt incomplete**


End file.
